Night is a kind of literary memoir (SparkNotes Editors). This book, written by Elie Wiesel, reflects author’s personal experience in the concentration camps during the World War II. Its main character is Eliezer, a twelve-year-old boy who narrates the story. Eliezer is represented as a dynamic character changing along the novel. A main accent is laid on his faith in God: from a devout teenager at the beginning of the Night he turns into a disappointed and faithless person at the end of it. Thou, there are some places in the book which don’t allow us to believe that this loss was complete.
The novel acquaints us with Eliezer, his family, his life in Sighet, a Romanian town, his father, a respected community leader and Moshe the Beadle who became Eliezer’s religious instructor. At the beginning of the work, his faith in God is absolute (SparkNotes Editors). When asked why he prays to God, he answers: “Why did I pray? . . . Why did I live? Why did I breathe?... I don’t know why” (Wiesel). His belief in an omnipotent, benevolent God is unconditional, and he cannot imagine living without faith in a divine power (SparkNotes Editors).
The first doubts in faith begin to torture Eliezer at Birkenau on seeing babies burnt in a huge pit. Eliezer refuses to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead: “Why should I bless His name?...What had I to thank Him for?” (Wiesel)
Eliezer’s disillusionment in God continues at Buna. He compares the hanging of a young boy with the God’s death. Someone asks: “Where is God now?” And Eliezer answeres: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows” (Wiesel).
At the end of the summer 1944 a Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) set in. Eliezer’s protest grows. When all the Jews of Buna begin their prayer, Eliezer declines it: “This day I ceased to plead” (Wiesel).
The above examples witness actually not about the loss of faith but vice versa. After the first night at Birkenau, on the one hand, he says: “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith,” but on the other hand, he ends with words:”Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (Wiesel), simultaneously admitting God’s existence. Or in the case with Akibe Drummer, a devout Jew, who is selected to be annihilated. Eliezer recognizes the fact that: “…as soon as he [Akibe Drummer] felt the first cracks forming in his faith, he has lost reason struggling and had begun to die” (Wiesel). Along the novel Eliezer fights for his life, for his father, for his humanity. Thus, reversing these words one may say that the very faith which he denies helps him to survive.
Elie Wiesel represents Eliezer as a person who undergoes changes under the inhumane conditions of the Holocaust. His struggle with God is very complicated. All the time Eliezer argues …